How to use the new forum

Hello everyone.

This thread shall serve as helpful collection of what is new in this forum over the other we had before.
Thus i try to update it a bit over time.

I will just list the big differences though not some small changes, if you think that i missed something important, then please add it to the bottom.



Forum Software
The first and most important information is, that the new forum software is XenForo.
The same forum software used in games like Terraria and Starbound aswell as many other examples.



Quotes
The old quotes were nothing but plain text. No reference and most important no highlight at all.
All it actually was, was a wrapper for the text aswell as a plain name for who initially wrote it.

The new quotes however are much more sophisticated. Here is an example of how it looks like:

Code:

[QUOTE="plaYer2k, post: 1286735472, member: 3061546"]...[/QUOTE]

You will note both the name of the person in plain text QUOTE="plaYer2k". That the old forum had aswell. Though new are post and member.

With the post information you are now able to precisely jump to a post ID by clicking on the ↑ to the right of the name at the quote.


The member information is used to notify the author of that post that his text was quoted.
So whenever someone quotes your text, you will know now as it will show up at the top right within the Alerts.
In that case it looks like this:


So no more do you have to search your own name in order to check if anyone, anywhere, quoted your text in order to reply to them.

That feature greatly improves cross-thread quotes and responses. Thus the overall flow of conversations and thus informations.



Spoiler tags
Finally we got these nice spoiler tags to hide huge walls of text and thus improve readability in a TLDR manner while offering more informations for those who are interest ... or simply hide something until they click and ask "why did i even click -_-".

To use them, you use this code:

Code:

[Spoiler=spoilerName]this text is hidden[/spoiler]

and it looks like this:

Change spoilerName to anything you like for the spoiler buttons name and inside the brackets comes the message you want to hide.


For other valuable BB code tags, please visit https://forums.keenswh.com/help/bb-codes



Likes
You can now like posts and encourage people to post more of that kind. That should be used to encourage people posting at a high standard. Overall it sure is just another e-penis meassure and nobody should really care ... but after all, most of us do for some reason.

In order to like a post, click the "Like" button at the bottom right of a post.




How to convert old URLs to new URLs
You might got old urls laying around that no longer work for this forum.

They look like this:
https://forums.keenswh.com/post/the-dark-art-of-engineering-magic-gyro-6957594
The new url looks like this:
https://forums.keenswh.com/threads/the-dark-art-of-engineering-magic-gyro.6957594/

In order to change them to the new layout you actually really just need one thing, the number at the end as that is the thread ID.
In my case that was 6957594. The name in front of it gets automatically fetched and you can add almost anything you want.
So these two lead to the same page:
https://forums.keenswh.com/threads/123.6957594/
https://forums.keenswh.com/threads/a.6957594/
https://forums.keenswh.com/threads/iLoveCake.6957594/

Why? Because the forum software is a database and stores each thread based on the ID, which is the number, and not the name given in front of it.

The old forum software had the huge flaw that once a threads title changed, old links did not work anymore because the titles were part of the URL. The new software does not care about the name anymore but only the number matters.

So in order to get you old URL over, imagine your old URL looking like this again:
https://forums.keenswh.com/post/the-dark-art-of-engineering-magic-gyro-6957594
Here you got title and thread ID.

For the new forum URL all you need is to copy your thread ID and repalce the threadID in this URL:
https://forums.keenswh.com/threads/.threadID/
At the end it should look like this:
https://forums.keenswh.com/threads/.6957594/


While the above example works for threads, you might find youself in a situation where you need a single post whichs url you got.
The procedure is quite similar here. You need to identify the postID and put it in a https://forums.keenswh.com/posts/postID/ url.

Taking this example (which still works for me though, but i had examples that did not)
https://forums.keenswh.com/post/show_single_post?pid=1281384408
and turn it over to the new format
https://forums.keenswh.com/posts/1281384408

And you are done!



How to find posts from before the forum change
Using the build-in search does not work for threads made before the forum change (yet?). Alternatively you should use google to search through the forum in combination with the URL fix presented above.
To search efficiently with google i would suggest this search:
site:forums.keenswh.com <your search text>

Example use:




Selective in-text Quote
You can easily select a section of the text you want to reply to by marking the textpassage with a mouse through holding the left mouse button down. Once the text is selectedd, you will notice a "Reply" popup at the bottom right corner of that text. If you click it, you will have that selected text as quote within your reply window.

This feature allows you to conveniently quote multiple text sections within a discussion. No more do you need to have to copy-paste it for every quote and cut it down to the significant part.

The quote also gets inserte where your current cursor is located within the reply. Thus if you have text written already but position the cursor at the top, you will insert any quote at the top of your current text when using that feature.

(Thanks to Knsgf for pointing toward it)




I hope that gives a good first insight of what are the biggest changes in this forum aswell as how to work around the URL issue.
Remember that this forum is quite new and thus some bugs can occur.

If you got questions or valuable additions for changes, please post them here
Enjoy the new and shiny forum.

Changelog:
2015-04-23
- added: Selective in-text Quote

 

can this be stickied?

 

Another tip: if you select text by click-dragging the left mouse button, a small "Reply" bubble will appear next to it. Clicking on that bubble will add the quote of the selected text to your reply; this feature allows you to quote text from several separate posts.

 

Moving this to off-topic as it doesn't concern SE or ME itself directly.
Stickying it, too.

 

Indeed thanks. I didnt think of adding that too. But it is indeed a nice feature the old forum lacked. Added to the OP.

 

Can i add signature ? Will my account dont get problem if i do this ?

 

@Dung
Sorry but i dont quite seem to understand your question.

You can access and change your signature here https://forum.keenswh.com/account/signature
The signature will be shown below your messages whenever you post somewhere.
You will not have any problems i am aware of when adding a signature as long as you follow the forum rules for the signatures (none of the following: obnoxious posts, distracting nonsense, flashing/epileptic animations, racism, hatespeech, generally being a huge dick etc).

 

I don't know why people wouldn't know about spoilers... its like a common things that all forums have now. If they don't have it, that means they have not updated in a while.

It DOES bother me that keen forums don't have the button for adding it in the edit box though. Its a VERY simple thing to add. I should know since I have my own forums.

 

Sure it is but the old forum software this forum had back in early 2015 was pretty old and limiting.
Quotes did work back then but were quite different.

This is also what this thread is about, to help people with the change from the old to the new forum, what new features are there and what has changed.

What exactly do you mean with the "edit box"?

If it is the "multi-line text field" at the bottom where you write the message/reply, then such thing exists. If you however meant within the message editor that appears when using "edit" on an old message, how would you logicaly implement such a thing from the functions point of view?
Should you collect through "+Quote" and then automatically or manually (by the click of a button like "insert +Quote") append these quotes to the edited message?

Furthermore, what would be the use for such a feature? Generally, if you write a message, you see all quoteworthy content. So it would only apply to messages that post past the point where you loaded the thread. The vast majority of these messages however are those posted after you posted your reply. Thus adding quotes to messages that appeard after the edited reply seems rather weird to me, unless i completely misunderstood the intention of that of course.

 

ha... no I meant a spoiler button.



I didn't make the image btw... I would just type stuff in not write it out like that... eww.

edit: ... so I just noticed they do have a spoiler button... although its not a button its... sub menu under insert button.

 

Urg how did i read "Quote" in that obvious "Spoiler"... sorry for the confusion, mine that is *grumpy old men noise*.

Agreed, there needs to be a button for spoilers in a simple fashion for most people. That is one with a popup for a name that wraps around what currently is selected.